Movie Questions (and Answers)

We’ve all found ourselves scratching our heads at the end of a movie, asking ourselves (and others) questions about what we just saw.

Some of those questions, of course, are central to a film’s understanding and meant to provoke thoughtful debate (the ending of 2001 has been doing that for more than four decades), while others arise from less-than-fully-baked ideas (we’ve always had a problem with the clueless aliens in Signs). A small few—like the “three seashells” from Demolition Man—defy contemplation.

And, yes, we’re quite aware that some of these mysteries are meant to be ambiguous. Or are plot devices that function only to move the story forward. That doesn’t mean we can’t wonder about the whispered words at the end of Lost in Translation—or speculate about the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.